Product Description

Journalist Dina Rabinovitch had just turned 40 when was diagnosed with breast cancer in September 2004. At that point she didn't know a thing about the disease. By the time of her death in autumn 2007, she was an expert. Her experience of the condition and its treatment, from diagnosis through mastectomy to remission and reoccurrence is recounted in this down-to-earth memoir, covering everything from trialling the last anti-cancer drugs to what to wear that's stylish after surgery. Warm, lively, at times irreverent, Rabinovitch's brave story of juggling a hectic career and a large, extended family while living - and dying - with cancer is essential reading.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #221570 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 272 pages

About the Author
Dina Rabinovitch was a regular columnist for the Guardian, as well as a critic and children's books reviewer. She died, aged 44, on 30 October 2007.

Customer Reviews

Great Read, Great Cause
I heard Rabinovitch's publisher wanted to call this Don't Take Off Your Party Dress, like life with breast cancer is one big celebration. Rubbish. They're wrong, but she's right. It's a serious subject, it involves the whole family, it's terribly sad and sometimes happy, and life goes on regardless. The author is a journalist and the writing is totally compelling, the medical stuff is informative, and you don't have to have breast cancer to read it. Though if there's anyone out there who doesn't know someone with the disease, I'd be shocked. All the money's going to cancer research, which is another reason to buy the book and read it. This moving memoir is long overdue.

Take Of f Your Party Dress
I read this book in one go but I'll be revisiting it in the future. The book is surprisingly easy to read. The daily rhythm of Dina's busy life gives it momentum and energy. The book meshes together the glamour of book launches, ordinary family and domestic events and the grind of hospital appointments. The unbearable sadness of living with serious illness lies beneath the surface. It is the author's lightness of touch that makes the this such a compulsive read. And the fact that all proceeds from the book are going to a charity to provide independent research into cancer, makes me want to recommend it even more.

"Observer" paperback of the week
Vanessa Thorpe, Sunday March 18, 2007.

As the late mother of a friend sat grim-faced on a London tube train, a strange man called to her with the cliched line: 'Cheer up love, it might never happen.' She replied: 'I am on my way to get chemotherapy and then to update my will, so you could say it has already happened.'

Her feisty retort has lived on since her death. The admirable Dina Rabinovitch, whose columns charting her life with breast cancer will be familiar to Guardian readers, is similarly bracing.

Too often even the most pragmatic, rational people talk of combating this disease as if it is a moral as well as physical struggle. And when it comes to breast cancer, all the new theories and pop psychology are frequently just another way of making women self-critical about their behaviour. If only they could just focus on positive thinking or take control of their medication ...

Rabinovitch's book is a robust response to this rubbish. With a great sense of humour, she dispenses with the ill-informed dogma and manages to remain compassionate about many of the things that get sufferers through the night. When she is unexpectedly advised by her oncologist to reconsider her imminent mastectomy, Rabinovitch is typically wry about the new suggestion that she should steer her own path to recovery.

'The crux seems to be that being involved in one's own medical decision-taking makes the patient feel more positive about the treatment. And "positive" is the holiest cancer mantra of them all. [Although, not, let it be said, positive in the sense of saying yes; because "pleasers" you know are so susceptible to cancer, they qualify as tumour magnets.]'

Her book is equally sardonic about the process of dealing with her newspaper bosses and her need for contact with the outside world. But it is Rabinovitch's talent for grounding these writings in the practical issues of her condition, such as how to keep yourself presentable and how to organise life around treatment, that makes clear she is aiming to aid fellow sufferers as well as to communicate her personal 'take' on the disease. Books, she says, are powerful: 'It is the books that first make me feel fear - a pointless emotion in these circumstances. Immune to doctors' grave looks, I turn out to be porous to print.'